I’ve been working on stuff, just not photographing it. Had to pull the lightbox yesterday out to demo how to use it, so I got the chance to photograph a couple of the things I’ve done in the last few weeks that came out pretty well.

McMurrough came out pretty well. In retrospect, I wish I’d pushed the kilt farther (it wasn’t challenging at all). The sword isn’t what I’d like it to be, but it was a learning experience. I’m sick of the half-assed treatment I give weapons in Infinity, and this is a step in the right direction.

I’m painting Dark Age, I guess. I’m actually pretty happy with how these came out, even though I’m frustrated by the low-quality of the metal in the metal figures and improved material but drastically worse casts of the plastic versions that came in the starter.

Dark Age doesn’t require as many tokens as Infinity does, but it does require kind of a lot of them. The nicest ones I’ve seen come from Terracutter, in Russia. I’ve yet to really get my money’s worth out of my Dark Age figures, if you know what I mean, so I’m not about to take on those shipping costs.

Not a problem: I created my own with just a little work. (Nothing here is likely new if you play Infinity but… you never know.)

I play Infinity, and in addition to a number of manufacturers (my preferred is Warsenal) who make tokens that range from OK to gorgeous, the classic go-to is the Infinity Marker Sheet Creator. You select the tokens you need, the size you need them in, and the size paper you’ll be printing (A4 != letter), click Submit, and it spits out a PDF you can print and cut the tokens out of. (So far as I know it’s kept quietly up-to-date; it’s got logos for NA2 and Druze Bayram.)

While the IMSC doesn’t generate tokens for anything non-Infinity: I have access to Visio. Generate a bunch of 25mm circles, fill them with the content you want, and print them out, and you’re in the same spot. (As I typed this up, I realized that I need to give this a try with LibreOffice Draw, just to see it work. I’d be surprised if it didn’t.)

To do this yourself:

Drag in a 25mm or 1″ circle.

Give it a 1pt line around the end.

Fill it Solid or Gradient with whatever colors that make you happy.

Add a Text element if you want text. Make it white, so you can see it on the color fill of your circle. Give it a drop shadow; why not? Drag it into the circle and arrange to taste.

Drag it into the Visio. Give it a drop shadow so it stands out and you can find it against the white background. Resize and arrange it to taste in the circle.

Group ’em if you want.

Repeat, with variations until you’ve got all the tokens you need created.

Align those suckers. Have some self-respect.

It’ll look like this:

PROTIP: if you’re gonna share things that use those icons around, don’t forget there’s a CC license you need to reference.

Have your tokens printed at Kinko’s in color at the highest quality and on a heavy stock paper. You can print them at home (I did), but the colors simply won’t be as vibrant. Also, if you print them on just regular paper, the punch will have trouble cleanly punching through the thin paper and you’ll end up with mangled paper edges that look awful; to mitigate this, you’ll have to punch through your token AND an index card at the same time. That’s a pain.

Buy a craft circle punch. Get a 1″ punch like this one for 25mm/1″ tokens. If you need 40mm tokens, for whatever reason, get a 1.5″ punch like this one: the difference between 40mm and 1.5″ is more significant than the difference between 25mm and 1″, but it’s Close Enough.

Cut your sheet into strips so you can get the punch lined up, and punch out your tokens.

Now, having punched out your tokens, you’ve got a choice to make:

Option 1: use some clear 1″ bottlecap jewelry stickers like these, and you’re done. These run 200 of them for less than $10, so this is very inexpensive. Just peel the sticker off the sheet, press it and your token together, and that’s it. They make these in 1.5″, too, if you want to do some larger tokens, but they’re less inexpensive.

Option 2: use some clear, 1″ acrylic disks like these (I use 1/8″ thick, instead of 1/16″). (If you shop with Soto, the coupon code TNK15OFF should be good for a 15% discount.) Brush Mod Podge onto the back of the disk, stick your paper token printed side against the glue, and smooth it out so there’s very little glue between the paper and the disk. If you want, brush some thinned Mod Podge against the back of the token. Once everything’s dry, scratch off or carefully take a little rubbing alchohol to the front of the token where you’ve clumsily gotten glue fingerprints on it.

I’ve done both ways. In general, I prefer the acrylic disks. I think they look nicer, and they’re much easier for me to handle. Unfortunately, they also require quite a bit more work, and cost about 6.4x as much. So: while I made my Infinity tokens with the acrylic disks, the Dark Age tokens I just knocked out got the sticker treatment.

Here’s a comparison photo:

Left – Punched out from an Infinity box, bottlecap sticker

Center – Printed out, clear acrylic disk

Right – Warsenal full-color acrylic token

So, maybe not as nice as the Warsenal tokens, but definitely good enough.

I picked up four boxes of Dark Age Forsaken Prevailers at NOVA, and have been steadily making progress on them.

In fact: I was almost fully painted with them when I took these photos:

Just five models to go. Of course, since then, another twelve have shown up (I’ve had to acknowledge that Warknights don’t really align with my playstyle), but they’ll get painted up rapidly, I think.

Now, getting things models together has been a rocky road. Best case scenario, stuff is falling apart. Worst case scenario, shit is just flat out breaking for being breathed on.

That Warknight Captain is going to run around with a bladeless hilt for the rest of his existence because that blade will. not. go. back. on.

I’m painting some Skylancers right now: one of them melted. Literally. Literally. I was priming it and holding it at an angle (like you do, when you’re trying to get good coverage), and the ankles on the model just… decided that the rest of the model was too much weight and just noodled all the way over and then broke off before my eyes. It was dramatic enough that my current theory is that there might have been some chemical reaction between the primer (Vallejo airbrush primer) and the chalky metal they use.

After some cussing, I drilled a hole up her butt, stuck a paperclip in there, and am relying on the paperclip to support her. It’s worked out so far, as it has for the Warwind. I ended up doing this for two of the Repentants, and I’m starting to think I need to do it for the other two. At this point, I’m confident they’re going to fall apart.

This has had a drastic impact on my inclination to put time into these models. I like the game, I’m starting to appreciate… if not the fluff, then the tone of the game. But if I’m going to have to fucking fight these models to bring them to the table, I’m going to get them painted and leave it at that.

So, I’d say most of these are tabletop quality and probably not much more. I’m pleased with the Banes, satisfied with most of the Command models, and I’m just glad to be done with the Warknights.